Spotify Kills Music Sales in the U.K.

Spotify deactivated a feature in the United Kingdom that allowed users to purchase new tracks. The change was spotted by Pocket-Lint on Friday, which noticed a new message that says: “We’re currently not supporting new download purchases on Spotify.” Hmm, seems strange to us, and we wonder if maybe the popular music service ran into licensing problems with its partners. Spotify said in a statement that the change was made in an effort to “pave the way for new features” and that it currently doesn’t have plans to re-establish the ability for in-app purchases.

Thankfully, users can still listen to tracks they have already downloaded, and anyone with gift cards can continue to use them. As Pocket-Lint notes, those of us in the United States haven’t ever been able to purchase music from Spotify directly, so we won’t see any changes at all. Hey, if you still need a place to find new tunes, might we recommend heading over to Amazon’s DRM-free MP3 store?